When do electricity prices change in Queensland?

1 July: the reference price resets

The Default Market Offer is the regulator's annual price cap for standing-offer contracts in New South Wales, South Australia and South East Queensland. It runs from 1 July to 30 June. Retailers must state every market offer as a percentage above or below it for a typical customer, so when it moves, the whole market's advertising moves with it. The 2026–27 determination took effect on 1 July 2026, and South East Queensland's residential reference price fell year on year.

A lower reference price does not mean your bill fell. It caps standing offers, which most households are not on, and a retailer can lift the rates on a market offer on the same day the cap comes down. What a household on a market offer gets on 1 July is a notice of new rates, not a promise of lower ones.

The rest of the year: your rates hold, the market moves

A market offer is the retailer's own plan, and its rates are variable unless the plan says otherwise. Under a national rule that took effect on 1 July 2026, a retailer can only raise the rates or charges on a market plan, or cut its feed-in tariff, on a single date in July. On a plan with a fixed price period the limit is once every 12 months, counted from the day the contract started. The exceptions are a change that follows directly from the network reassigning your tariff, and plans priced on the wholesale spot market. The retailer must still tell you before it changes your rates, and it does not need your agreement.

Prices can still fall at any time, and retailers launch new plans and withdraw old ones all year. So the plan you are on stays put between Julys while the market moves around it. The most common pattern is a plan that is sharp when it launches, gathers customers, and is repriced the next July while the launch price is still what people remember signing up for.

Benefit periods end quietly too. A plan with a discount for twelve months reverts to its undiscounted rates at the end of them, and the bill goes up. Since 1 July 2026 the rate after a benefit ends can be no higher than the retailer's own standing offer, which limits the jump but does not remove it.

What to do about it

• Read the 1 July notice from your retailer rather than filing it. It states the new rates and, usually, what the change means for a typical customer.
• Compare in July, after the reset, when every plan on the market has moved. A comparison from June is out of date by the second week of July.
• Compare again when a benefit period ends, and whenever a price-change notice arrives.
• Read the better offer message on your bill, and from 30 December 2026 in the email that comes with it. It says whether your own retailer has a cheaper plan on your usage, though not whether another retailer does. See what the better offer message checks.
• Or have it done for you. Energy Watch re-prices every plan on the market against your usage around each of your bills and around 1 July, and only tells you when something is worth changing.